Roman Polanski's THE GHOST, his first contemporary drama in two decades all set to start shooting!

Hey folks, Harry here... Personally - I love Roman Polanski films, there is generally an air of harsh reality mixed with a breath of poetry and artistry that is distinctly his own. Well, I'm glad to say that I just got sent the following press release about his new film, which Summit has wisely financed via some of that crazy TWILIGHT money. Well, if Summit intends to finance films like this one, may that series continue to fill their coffers, right?

OSCAR®-WINNING FILMMAKER ROMAN POLANSKI’S
UPCOMING POLITICAL THRILLER THE GHOST TO STAR
EWAN MCGREGOR, PIERCE BROSNAN, KIM CATTRALL, TOM WILKINSON, JIM BELUSHI AND OLIVIA WILLIAMS
Project to Begin Production in Germany February 2009
PARIS, January 21, 2009 — Academy Award®-winning filmmaker Roman Polanski is to direct his first contemporary thriller in more than twenty years. His new project, THE GHOST, will begin shooting in Berlin in two weeks’ time, on February 4th. The movie tells the story of a former British Prime Minister, Adam Lang, (played by Pierce Brosnan) who is holed up on an island off the Eastern seaboard of the USA in midwinter, writing his memoirs. When his long-standing aide drowns, a professional ghostwriter (played by Ewan McGregor) is sent out to help him finish the book. The anonymous ghostwriter is quickly drawn into a political and sexual intrigue involving Lang’s wife, Ruth (played by Olivia Williams) and his aide (played by Kim Cattrall). Hanging over Lang is the threat of a war crimes trial and a mysterious secret from his past that threatens to jeopardize international relations. Jim Belushi, Robert Pugh and recent Golden Globe® Tom Wilkinson have also joined the cast.
THE GHOST is based on the novel by the same name written by best-selling author Robert Harris. It won the International Thriller Writers’ Award for best novel of 2008. Harris joined Polanski in adapting the book for the big screen.
Polanski will produce the film along with Robert Benmussa and Alain Sarde.
Summit International, which has a long-standing relationship with Polanski and the producers, is representing the worldwide rights to the film for RP Productions and has already pre-sold a number of major territories around the globe including: Pathé in France; Kinowelt in Germany; Optimum in the UK; Rai Cinema, S.P.A. in Italy; Acme UAB in the Baltic States; Dutch Filmworks in Benelux; SPI International in Eastern Europe; Odeon S.A. in Greece; Sam Film in Iceland; United King in Israel; Sun Distribution Group S.A. in Latin America; Jaguar Films in the Middle East; Lusomundo in Portugal; AB Svensk in Scandinavia; and WPM Film in Thailand. A U.S. distributor has yet to be announced. ICM is representing North American rights.
“There are great roles at the heart of the movie and we got great actors to play them. I couldn’t be happier,” said Roman Polanski.
Robert Benmussa and Alain Sarde stated, “After THE PIANIST and OLIVER TWIST, it’s a thrill to make a thriller with Polanski.”
Summit International’s CEO Patrick Wachsberger said, “We are so thrilled to be working again with Roman Polanski in a genre that he mastered over the years with KNIFE IN THE WATER, CUL-DE-SAC and FRANTIC.”
Ewan McGregor will next be seen in ANGELS & DEMONS and is well known for his role as Obi-Wan Kenobi in STAR WARS EPISODE I, II, and III as well as his starring roles in TRAINSPOTTING, BIG FISH and MOULIN ROUGE! for which he was nominated for a Golden Globe as Best Actor.
Pierce Brosnan most recently starred in MAMMA MIA! and the upcoming THE GREATEST, which will premiere at the Sundance Film Festival this January. The respected actor has brought many great roles to the screen including his Golden Globe nominated performance in THE MATADOR.
Kim Cattrall is best known for her role as Samantha Jones in both the recent theatrical blockbuster success SEX AND THE CITY and the HBO Series of the same name.
Olivia Williams played opposite Bruce Willis in THE SIXTH SENSE and her other credits include PETER PAN and EMMA.
Jim Belushi’s has appeared in numerous films and is well known for his role in the television series “According to Jim” and for his performances on Saturday Night Live.
Robert Pugh was seen in THE LAST LEGION and MASTER AND COMMANDER: THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD.
Tom Wilkinson recently won a Golden Globe for his supporting role in the HBO mini-series JOHN ADAMS. Wilkinson also starred in VALKYRIE as well as MICHAEL CLAYTON.
Filming will take place mainly in Studio Babelsberg and as well as additional locations in Berlin.
The production is set up as a French-German-UK Coproduction between RP Films (F) 11, Babelsberg Film (Ger) and Runteam III (UK). Henning Molfenter, Carl L. Woebcken and Christoph Fisser (Studio Babelsberg) will co-produce the film along with Timothy Burrill (Runteam). Other production credits include Oliver Luer as line producer, Daniel Champagnon as production supervisor, Pawel Edelman as director of photography, Albrecht Konrad as production designer, Dinah Collin as costume designer, Fiona Weir as casting supervisor, Ralph Remstedt as first assistant director, Sylvette Baudrot as script supervisor, Jean-Marie Blondel as sound engineer, Didier Lavergne the Oscar winner make up designer and Hervé de Luze as editor.
McGregor is represented by Endeavor. Brosnan is represented by CAA. Williams is represented by Independent Talent. Polanski, Cattrall and Belushi are represented by ICM. Pugh is represented by Emptage Gallett in the UK. Wilkinson is represented by Lou Coulson Associates.
Additional Information
Roman Polanski, the Academy Award®-winning director of THE PIANIST (2002) received his first Oscar® nomination for his 1964 film KNIFE IN THE WATER. Another Oscar nomination followed for the screenplay adaptation of the 1968 psychological thriller ROSEMARY'S BABY. Polanski was again nominated for Best Director in 1974 for CHINATOWN and once more in 1979 for TESS. To date he has directed 17 features in addition to several productions of live theatre.
British writer Robert Harris is the author of Fatherland (1992), a New York Times bestseller which imagined that Germany won World War II, subsequently made into an HBO movie starring Rutger Hauer and Miranda Richardson. His second novel Enigma (1995) about the breaking of the German Enigma code, was turned into a film starring Kate Winslet with a screenplay by Tom Stoppard. Archangel (1998) became a BBC mini-series in 2005, starring Daniel Craig. In 2003, Harris turned his attention towards Ancient Rome with his acclaimed Pompeii. He followed this with Imperium (2006), the first of a trilogy of novels about the life of Rome's great orator, Cicero.

I always wondered how he could be able to hire sometimes big name actors for his movies. Shouldn't they be scared off by the possible controversy? He's not Victor Salva who is even today able to keep his crime secret from the people who he works with. Polanski's case is one of THE most well known Hollywood crimes in history, so I wonder why so many a-listers not just work with him, but are also open friends with him.

About this fucking pedophile! People make me sick! This guy can make a great fucking film THE PIANIST, which was by accident! Still doesnt mean he never had sex with a 13 year old! Hell would people still like Steven Speilberg if he killed a child, NO! I mean come on guys, there are just things that are wrong in the world and this fucking director is one of them!

An entire organization (a death cult, really), which not only covers up but actively facilitates and the continual rape of thousands upon thousands of children -- going so far as to move the rapists to other churches so they can CONTINUE TO RAPE CHILDREN.<br><br>You ask me, by the numbers, the Catholic Church is FAR WORSE than Polanski. And, at the very least, Polanski has made a handful of amazing films. What the flying fuck has the Catholic Church done? Nominate a Nazi Pope to lead the cult members to more child rape? Connect the dots, retards.

I wonder if those worthless cretins pathetically trying to spit on one of several greatest living directors ever realize that, in any random minute of his life, Polanski has accomplished infinitely more than they and anyone they know will ever manage to accomplish in their entire meaningless lives? If so, does it make them contemplate suicide?

JackPumpkinHead, who would want to have a life like this cock sucker! There is a reason he fled to FRANCE, because they love children just as much! So go child hunting sicko, because that is what you sound like! As far as LaserPants statement, dude your a fucking douchbag of piss! It is one thing to pick on an indivdual person, like the person in this talk-back, or persons, like someone like you, me, or even priest! Yet to go after an entire Faith for the actions of just a few sick mother fuckers out there is wrong! There are over a billion catholics in the world cock-sucker! Now out of a billion population, there are bound to be some sick mother-fuckers in that socitey. Regardless if it is of the faith or not, so before you go codenming an entire nation of people who have faith, please go find some faith first. Cause someone who did, of any kind could know the difference. So suck on some CUM, you jizz drinking super QUEER!

Who drug and rape little girls. You poor fools don't even realize how truly pathetic your admiration of Polanski — even AFTER knowing what he's done — shows you to be. And the hilarious part is the PURE HYPOCRISY of how these same people are among the FIRST to rail against the Catholic Church for allowing the same things to happen under their watch and poo-poo their neighbors who might diddle kids in the neighborhood.<p>Newsflash, jackasses: IT'S ALL WRONG!!!<p>All of you singing Polanski's praises, suggesting that his filmmaking trumps the crimes and child molestation he's committed and escaped punishment for, simply show yourselves to be as morally bankrupt as the Hollywood morons who legitimize and enrich that child rapist by financing and acting in his films. >:(

got their fourteen-year-old girlfriends drunk in an attempt to get laid when they were kids. on the other hand, if hitler had made some really good films, would it be OK to separate the man's political life from his film career? just curious...

Drugging and sodomizing a 13 year old girl is his personal life? No. It's a crime for which he has still not served his time. Until he does, I won't support anything he does and will continue to speak out about it here.

Don't bother commenting on what you think you know about this case until you go to smokinggun.com and read the police reports. He bargained down to a conviction of statutory rape but what he actually did was drug (not get drunk, drug) and sodomize a 13 year old girl who said no. This is a case of rape, not some cultural misunderstanding. I'd like to know where Harry draws his moral line in the sand. What does a man have to do before he'll stop getting Harry's hard earned money?

That rapist of a child, should not be allowed to profit from, or sell his works in the U.S. All of his films, and any other work of his, should be banned here and not allowed to be distributed for sale in any form.

The casting is good except for Kim Cattrall (to hook the Sex and City crowd) and Jim Belushi (to hook some sort of comedy crowd). Kim Cattrall is too old for that part.
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Roman might want to pick up the pace from what it is in the novel.

But the more I thought about it the more I realized that he has never really faced any consequences for his actions. I mean, I have no problem watching the films of a convected rapist or molester, honestly, as long as he has paid a price for his crimes and admitted his guilt. But Polanski, while he has admitted his actions has never really paid any sort of price or punishment for his behavior. <p>
No, I am not like those here who feel he has to be sentenced to prison for a long time, but still I see no reason he couldn't be fined, serve some time in jail and be on probation or hell deported from the US. I mean, it is one thing to be in France because you fear extradition, it is another thing to be there because you are banned from the US as part of your punishment.

I witnessed mothers trying to pimp out their daughters to various industry people, so I know it is real. As for the menage part, according to members of Def Leppard, they regularly slept with mother and daughter teams while on tour. That said, this wasn't the case here with Polanski. No, Polanski drugged this girl and boozed her up, and then raped her. He isn't even denying it, he's just been dodging the consequences as Continentalop says, for years. The sicko is a rapist of a child...and this wasn't just a case of statutory rape, so there was no sense of a mutual wanting here, even though a minor can't give consent, at least, if there was a mutual longing, we could say there was a blurring of the lines, but it wasn't there, it was simply forced rape. In fact, I think he even roughed her up a bit, if I remember correctly?<BR><BR>This guy has probably been doing this for years to would be actresses and models, and even known, actresses and models, and getting away with it, and probably still is? Many women are afraid of getting blacklisted in the industry, so they say nothing. This time however, he got caught...and he wasn't able to buy the girl's silence, or her mother's, via a quiet court settlement, once it went public.

It humors me a great deal that many moons ago the talkbacks were unified against Michael Jackson. Polanski gets a pass by many.It's ironic how if someone is producing something you like they get a free pass, but if they don't they are a nasty pedophile. To me he's a sick pervert who deserves no forgiveness. The fact that he fled criminal charges goes to speak volumes of his guilt. How anyone could support this is beyond me.

and should make a solid movie. The casting sounds about right (much better to have McGregor in the lead than the originally-slated Nic Cage as the writer, and Brosnan can do uppity English (MISTER JOHNSON springs to mind) with a hint of sleazy (TAILOR OF PANAMA) in his sleep. I'll watch Olivia Williams in anything, and Belushi can act when he puts his mind to it (SALVADOR, anyone?). OK - colour me interested.

A rapist. And not just a flawed person; he's still on the run from the law. I can separate a director's art from his past; but this guy is still RUNNING. He should be in jail. He is the only creator whose product I will refuse to watch on principle.

...makes no fucking sense. Last time I checked Bitter Moon, Death & the Maiden and The Ninth Gate were all released in the last 20 years. It's his first "contemporary" movie in the last 10 years, since he's only made two movies both set in the past but - Anyway what's the significance? Whether Polanski directed a contemporary movie or one set in 4,000 BC I'm excited for it, even with Jim Belushi(??) Although Oliver Twist was disappointing, I disagree with one feedbacker (Ninth Gate is excellent) and agree with another (Bitter Moon is an underrated masterpiece.)

All those posts over the last few years from talkbackers lusting over whatshername, hemmaroidy, and everyone joins in, but holy moral outrage at the mention of Polanski. You've been watching fox documentaries too long